


Redamancy

by InkandOwl



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Friendship study, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23522764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkandOwl/pseuds/InkandOwl
Summary: “It was hard for us—” Beverly starts, promptly ignoring Richie, “In a different way, with our parents.”Eddie pushes his hand roughly over his forehead and into his hair, “We just wanted a couple more hours where we didn’t have to be at home.”It’s such a quiet admission, and even though they’ve defeated Pennywise, started to live in their own truths, Beverly wonders if the two of them ever fully shook Sonia Kaspbrak and Alvin Marsh from their bones.—Beverly and Eddie heal themselves in six parts
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak & Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 30
Kudos: 277





	Redamancy

**Author's Note:**

> I'll spend the rest of my life writing the subgroup of Losers friendships. There's such a potential for such a strong loving support system between Eddie and Beverly and i'm gonna tap that til the end times, baby! 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @inkandowl and on twitter @PaperWarewolf

The setting sun reflects off of the icy snow, throwing blinding light in every direction where it glitters, but two fifteen year olds in Derry, Maine can’t bring themselves to care when they soak in the tiny shared freedom. Beverly laughs when she laces her fingers in between Eddie’s and lets him run full tilt towards the hill, her shoulder jerking a little harshly. Eddie’s boots skid over the crunchy snow and he tosses her a careless smile when he slides over the bank. She careens after him, laughter wild when her feet slip out from underneath her and she barrels into Eddie, the two of them rolling down the hill in a slushy pile. 

They lay together in a breathless heap for a moment when Eddie finally whoops and says, “You’re supposed to bend your knees, Marsh!” 

Beverly laughs wildly, tears collecting in her eyes when she chokes out, “I didn’t— I didn’t realize there was a science to throwing yourself down a hill.” 

Eddie giggles, his head turning in the snow, wool knit hat knocked askew over his brown hair; grown increasingly wilder every year, no matter how much Sonia tries to wrestle it into submission. “Wanna go again?” His cheeks are flushed red, along with the tip of his nose, bitten with cold and he looks so alive. 

Beverly rolls onto her elbows, clapping her gloved hands together to knock the snow loose, “I can’t.” It’s getting dark and these secret moments, only for them, are short and sanctioned to only a couple hours in the evening, right before dinner. “We should learn how to make a fire, and pitch a tent. Then we could move into the woods.” 

A complicated array of emotions crosses Eddie’s face— at war with never wanting to go home and not wanting to live in the woods. He settles on looking down the bridge of his nose at Beverly, “I’ll build you a cabin instead.” 

“With a flower box, and a swimming pool. Indoors, because I want to use it all year.” Beverly sits up, pulling Eddie with her. Their legs tangled together like they can’t help it. 

“Anything you want.” He grins easy. “A guest room for Bill that you can sneak away to in the night?” 

She doesn’t even have time to react before Eddie is opening his mouth in shock at her, brown eyes wide and scandalized and Beverly gasps, shoving him backwards into the snow, “Edward!” 

It’s the only retort she can muster and Eddie grapples with her lazily, “Beverly!” He tosses back with the same inflection. 

Beverly pins his wrists beside his head and growls, “What about you? Need your own hidey hole to play house with Tozier in?” Eddie smiles at her, soft and a little sad. He opens his mouth to say something, then settles on closing it again, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. Beverly lays her head down on his chest and breathes out the cold winter air. She can’t hear his heartbeat through all the layers of his sweatshirt and his flannel and the waterproof coat, and for a moment, if she closes her eyes, she can feel a warmth spread beneath her cheek. And if she presses her hand to it, her fingers will come back thickly coated in blood. 

—

Ben is carefully fashioning pieces of balsa wood together with touches of tacky glue on a toothpick. “They still make this shit?” Richie picks up the bronze colored tube and spins it between his hands, “It doesn’t work on anything— it’s literally made to fall apart and melt.” He drops it like it’s personally offended him, “Ugh, awful.” He grunts. 

“That’s because you don’t know how to use glue.” Eddie mumbles and Beverly snorts out a laugh. She’s been trying to tailor a shirt to Eddie’s frame and it’s proving time consuming. His biggest stipulation had been that she not use straight pins while it was on his body, leaving her to put it on him, then take it off, put it on him, rinse and repeat. 

Ben holds up his abstract art and says, “I prefer wood glue, but I didn’t want to waste it on scraps.” 

It’s circular and medieval looking, and Ben lovingly places it on top of Richie’s head. 

It’s been a lazy morning, waiting for the evening to roll around so that they can all crash Bill’s book launch party in LA, like they’re not all a bunch of new money weirdos. Beverly had lived a lifetime of dreams from the deadlights, and they should be down one of the people in this room, so she will take every lazy morning for eternity. “He’s saving it so that he can build me a cabin.” Beverly glances up at Eddie, her green eyes sliding over his face, “Since _someone_ never made good on his promise.” 

Ben and Richie are watching them from Ben’s desk, Richie’s palms leaned heavily against the metal top of it, “What are you talking about?” 

Beverly keeps her eyes locked on Eddie, who looks like he’s digesting it— the reality hanging on the tip of his tongue, and then he startles like he’s been electrocuted, “Oh my god.” He whispers, and then louder, “Oh my god!” Beverly laughs with delight and Eddie steps off of the stool she’s had him perched on, wrapping her up in a tight hug and spinning her around like he’s meeting her for the first time— for the third time. 

She’s got her hair up in a sloppy bun, and when Eddie wraps his hand tightly around the make of her head to hold her close, he turns it into even more of an ungodly mess. Beverly laughs wetly against his shoulder, feels out the scar tissue underneath his plain white undershirt that crawls from his sternum over the steady beat of his heart. She puts her ear there just to hear it. 

“Did you guys have a memory thing?” Ben asks fondly, making a dreamy gesture with his hand. 

These happen in their group— not as frequently as they did last year, when they first left Derry, but it’s not unheard of. Beverly can see the frantic energy in Richie’s stance, wanting to needle the memory out of them and having honed a little bit of impulse control in his age. Beverly rests her head against Eddie’s collarbone with a fond sigh, arm wrapped around his waist still, “Me and Eds used to stay out after school or clubhouse meets, just the two of us. He promised to build me a cabin so we could move out into the woods together and we would never have to go home.” 

“You guys used to hang out without us?” Ben aims for curious sounding and lands squarely on jealous. 

Not one to be out done, Richie blurts out, “Were you guys, like— together?” 

Eddie laughs then, a soft huff of air and Beverly can feel him shake his head against the top of hers, “Nah. Twerpy little fifteen year old me? When she had five actually hot guys around her? It was solidarity.” 

“You were a cutie, Eddie.” Beverly says, the same time Ben asks—

“Solidarity for what?” And then Richie

“You thought I was hot?” 

“It was hard for us—” Beverly starts, promptly ignoring Richie, “In a different way, with our parents.” 

Eddie pushes his hand roughly over his forehead and into his hair, “We just wanted a couple more hours where we didn’t have to be at home.”

It’s such a quiet admission, and even though they’ve defeated Pennywise, started to live in their own truths, Beverly wonders if the two of them ever fully shook Sonia Kaspbrak and Alvin Marsh from their bones. Beverly shoots Eddie a sly glance before she’s sauntering back to her alteration, “And to practice kissing sometimes.” 

It only happened a couple times— a few soft kisses traded in the clubhouse where Beverly looped her arms around Eddie’s neck and he would respectfully hold onto her waist, only ever escalating to slipping their tongues together for a few seconds before Eddie wrinkles his nose and Bev laughed loudly against his mouth. It still makes Eddie blush spectacularly and Ben coo softly at the memory. 

Richie keeps his arms crossed over his chest, glaring down at the floor like he’s deep in thought. ‘Stupid boys’ Beverly thinks, and she tosses the shirt at Eddie, “You’re all set, now get down so I can try and sew Richie into something.” 

—

Bev makes a strained face as she tries to trot over the edge of the roof with her pilfered booze. Her traitorous high heels snap loudly against the ceramic floors though. “The music is definitely loud enough, no one noticed.” Eddie looks up over his glass of bourbon. There’s fancy spherical whiskey stones in the glass and Eddie shakes them around curiously, “I can’t believe Bill’s agent copped for an open bar at this place.” 

“Rich people make no sense.” Beverly folds her left leg up underneath her, wedging the right one under the rail so that it can hang over the edge. 

“It’s not just the cost.” Eddie gestures around, “Drunk people on a rooftop? I’ve seen that guy in the suede jacket nearly tumble over the edge four times tonight just trying to talk to people. This place is a liability stacked on a liability wrapped in a fancier liability.” 

Beverly laughs, covering her mouth loosely with her fingers, “God, you must be so good at your job.” 

Eddie preens at that, “I am.” 

She looks out over the city, a pleasant breeze tossing her artfully curled red hair gently around her face. She can almost forget for a second that they’re in a hub of pollution here in LA. It’s loud out there— cars and people, the night time moving like a herd of animals prowling and hunting. Being hunted. The handcrafted band of brushed white gold on her left ring finger makes a light tapping noise when Beverly grips the rail next to her head. Ben had made it himself, with his artful hands and his artful heart. “We made it.” Beverly closes her eyes for a moment and hums happily. 

“I used to think I wouldn’t.” Eddie says, and his voice is sadder, more choked off than Beverly suspected he would be about the sentiment. “I thought if the clown didn’t get me, it would be something else. A disease, my mom, and then my wife, and then—” Beverly opens her eyes at the way Eddie’s words rattle between his teeth, “Myself. I thought about it a lot, you know?” 

“Dying?” 

“Making it stop.” Eddie squints across the dark spread of LA, “When we went back, when— when It got me—”

“Eddie—”

“I was scared but I thought, ‘Maybe this is a mercy’.” Eddie finishes his drink in a single swallow. 

Beverly runs her thumb up underneath her eyebrow; she spent far too long on her makeup to be ruining it now, “God, I fucking hate you.” Eddie coughs on a laugh at her little huffed out admission, and then laughs for real. Honest and from his chest and Beverly grins, “Don’t say shit like that, Eddie, I get it, I do, but don’t say that.” She sighs, “I used to dream about that after the deadlights, you know? What happened to you when we went back to Derry, only you didn’t survive. And we would spend all those nights together, and you were the only one who _got it_ , like we were cut from the same soul. I had to see you live, because that meant I could live too.” 

Eddie moves his glass aside, solemn face made more solemn with alcohol and he holds his arm out, “Come here.” 

Beverly spins around, settling back into the spread of Eddie’s thighs and leans back against his chest when he wraps his arms around her. “You were in love with him back then.” 

“Oh, just cut right to the fucking chase, Marsh.” Eddie’s voice rumbles in his chest and Beverly laughs. 

“You’re still in love with him.” No question to it, just a pure, unfiltered analysis courtesy of vodka. Eddie doesn’t answer, but he squeezes her hand underneath his, “You should tell him.” 

“Should probably come out first.” He smells nice, a mix of fancy cologne and bourbon and Beverly is just drunk enough to press her nose into the side of his neck for a moment. She opens her mouth and Eddie presses a finger to her lips, “Eh eh eh, no. We’re not making a party out of it.” 

“Boo.” Beverly kicks her legs out in front of her, “You know someone here is going to report that we’re having an affair.” 

“I should hope so!” 

Beverly laughs, absolutely thrilled. Post-Derry Eddie is a delight. He is the boy that Beverly spent sunsets with working through an unspeakable loneliness. “Are we going to have to split custody?” Ben’s voice is fond and clear with unmistakable sobriety. He never drinks. They never ask. 

He takes a seat across from them, looking everything like the cover of People’s Sexiest Man issue. The top button of his shirt is undone and Beverly has to resist the urge to undo two more. “You’re both going to have to take my last name.” Beverly declares, “You’ll be sister wives, uh— brother husbands.” 

Ben lets out a put upon sigh, his eyes locked onto Eddie’s over the top of Bev’s head and he’s fighting back a grin, “Never thought I’d be jealous of little Eddie Kaspbrak, and yet.” 

“You won’t be competing for much, just a few lunch dates here and there.” Eddie says, “Maybe the occasional movie. Difficult to lose your wife to a gay man.” 

It takes a few alcohol soaked moments and a look of surprise on Ben’s face for Beverly to sit up, momentarily wobbly and clap her hands together, “You did it! How do you feel?” 

Eddie looks like he’s going to throw up but he swallows and puts on a shaky grin, “I feel— I don’t know.” He admits. 

“Wait.” Ben reaches forward and puts a hand on Eddie’s knee, “Am I the first person you came out to?” 

“Except for me!” Bev gestures between them, “When we were fourteen.” 

Ben gets all watery then and it’s sweet, eyebrows all pushed together tenderly, “Eddie, congratulations. Thank you for trusting me like this.” 

“Oh god.” Eddie breathes out and buries his face in his hand, “Did you do this to Richie too?” 

When Richie had come out, it had been on Google Hangouts and he had spread his arms wide and said, “I’m super fucking gay!” and it had been a _commotion_. Too entrenched in Richie’s vibrant energy to treat it like anything but exhilarating. He’d cried about it on the phone later to Bill though, something they all knew, just quietly. “You should tell him!” Ben says, like he’s just had the best idea that no one else has ever had, “It’ll be so nice for you guys to have that solidarity, and you’re already his best friend, I bet he would feel so relieved to have that in common with you.” 

“Benjiiiii.” Beverly purrs, a warning mixed with a very solid, ‘I love you and I know you mean well but shut the fuck up’. 

“I’m gonna go talk to Bill. Let him know I’m considering reading his book.” Eddie gets up, brushes off the back of his pants. He pats Bev on the head as he leaves and she leans back on her hands, dropping her head back to look up at the sky. 

“I feel like I said something wrong.” 

Bev hums and rolls her cheek against her shoulder to look at him, “He’s fine, but you know how Eddie is. One act of bravery costs one emotional shut down.” 

“Huh.” Ben holds his hand out to her so that she’ll come sit in his lap now. And she does with glee. “Seems exhausting. Is that what it was like? When we were kids?” 

He’s asking about the times spent alone and Bev shrugs, “Sort of. We didn’t have to talk about it, because we both knew why the other one was scared. We were allowed to be terrible together.” 

“You know, Richie used to come over to my house a lot when we were younger.” 

“Are you trying to make me jealous now?” 

“Is it working?” Ben whispers against her ear and it makes Beverly shiver. 

She rubs her nose against the hint of stubble at his cheek, “Little bit.” Ben laughs and she kisses him quickly on the jaw, “You gonna tell me what you two got up to?”

“So that we could be sad sacks together.” Ben says with a tremendous sigh, “I would let him go through my poetry books and he would pick out all of his favorites and we would talk about them. He’d write on napkins from the Diner on Monroe they would be a shit show— just napkin pieces and receipt paper all over the place and he’d cobble it together on my bed like a conspiracy board.” He laughs fondly at that. 

Beverly can picture it— Richie as a teenager, with his stretched out limbs and his wiry neck trying to make sense of his own thoughts without the help of Adderall or Ritalin. He’d always needed some sort of sieve to filter everything through, to put him into some sort of order. “That’s cute, you guys had a book club.” She croons, “Richie has a soft heart.” 

Ben kisses Bev’s shoulder, “Yeah, don’t know why you guys always gave _me_ shit about being the sensitive one, at least my poetry was about all sorts of things, Richie used to just write the same thing seven hundred different ways. Love, love, love, and drowning in some girls endless dark eyes and freckles and biting into her smart mouth. Or him, I guess.” Ben corrects himself and Beverly spins around, takes Ben’s face into her hands. He furrows his brows at her, mind slogging through all the bits and pieces and then— ding! “Oh. _Oh_ my god.” 

Beverly laughs so loudly that a couple walking by looks at her a little startled. Richie calls it her donkey laugh. “Stupid!” She covers her mouth through snorts, “They’re so stupid.” She stands up and holds her hands out to Ben, “Let’s go find Mike, I need to hear something intelligent right this second.” 

“Don’t hold your breath, babe, he’s had three long island iced teas and he’s been telling Bill’s agent about a concept he’s had for a romance novel involving the string theory and a multiverse.” Beverly hoots at that and Ben tucks her close against his side, “It’s very cerebral.” 

—

“Sometimes I wish I were still out there.” Richie doesn’t look up from the notepad he’s scratching at when he talks, “On the back porch, drinking jet fuel. With the boys, getting louder and louder. As the empty cans drop out of our paws. Like booster rockets falling back to Earth.” There’s nothing written on the pages, just harsh lines made deeper and deeper every time Richie runs the pen back over it. He looks up over the rim of his glasses at Beverly, and when she quirks an eyebrow at him in question he grins. It’s tired and only hints at the right corner of his mouth, “Jet by Tony Hoagland. It’s my favorite poem.” 

Beverly picks at her bacon, watching the fibers tear away from the bits of fat, “Ben told me you guys had a poetry club.” 

Richie huffs out a laugh, “Yeah, I know. He said you weren’t very surprised by it.”

“Are you upset that he told me?” 

“No.” Richie puts the pen down, “Stop fucking up your food, the hell.” He stops her hand only to steal the bacon and shove it into his own mouth. “I majored in creative writing, minored in poetry. That’s sexy right?” 

“Do you still have any of the poems you wrote? With Ben?” 

Another laugh, “No, no. I don’t have shit from my childhood, maybe my mom does who knows.” 

It’s an early morning for Bev, but this is how Richie is, surprisingly. Up with the sun, no doubt to start wreaking havoc as soon as possible, “Do you remember any of them?” 

It’s nice, having him as a neighbor. “Every one of them.” 

“Richie—” 

Beverly thinks she can count on her hands all the times she’d seen Richie Tozier cry as a child. He was made of the real stubborn stuff that only kids who ran on impulse and fear that they had shackled up inside of their bodies like poisoned ball bearings meant to keep them on their feet. As an adult, Richie seems to have worn himself so thin on the tread of living a half life that his sadness oozes out of him like an abrasion at a moments notice. 

His hand shakes when he brings it up to his eyes, knocking his glasses up to his forehead and letting out a trembling breath. Richie had been terribly quiet when Eddie had come out to them, hands tucked into the sleeves of his cardigan like a safety blanket as he sat, knees locked on Bill’s couch. It had been gentler than Richie’s coming out— more warm hugs and soft words. 

“We almost lost him, Richie.” Beverly doesn’t want to dredge this up, not while Richie is trying to keep his sort of crying from turning into terrible sobbing, but she has to, “And then we didn’t and now we get to have him, and if you want, you can love him too.” 

Richie lets his glasses fall back over his eyes, teary and red and he takes a wet, rattling breath, “I spent more of my life in love with him than not. Just years and years of it building up when I wasn’t allowed, and now? He’s alive, it’s fucking 2017 and we live in LA? He’s gay? This is that fucking clown, I know it.” 

“Too good to be true, huh?” Beverly smiles and puts her hand on top of Richie’s wrist. 

“It’s too much. I love him _too much_. I’m a fucking Grindr nightmare Bev, I’m gonna cry and try to blow him, and probably pass out and throw up.” Richie taps the table top, “And that’s going to be _before_ I tell him how I feel.” 

Beverly laughs loudly at that, head tossed back, “Oh, Rich.” She tries to take him in. Not the Richie Tozier from their youth; scrawny with greasy hair and a sweet child's voice saying the worst shit that cropped into his head. And not the teen who seemed to emanate music, whether from his walkman or his car stereo or from his constant humming and laughed when he was nervous— so, all the time. She takes him in as a full grown man with broad shoulders and a broad chest, big enough to house that wild heart. Handsome in a way that strikes hard and fast and the tiredest eyes. World weary and kinder for it. 

“Me and Eddie used to hang out all the time alone, because we were hungry.” Beverly takes a deep breath, “When we went home at night there was no one there to love us. No one to kiss us goodnight without it hurting, and no one to tell us we were going to be okay. And we didn’t want pity, and we didn’t want someone else to fall on— we just wanted love. It was easy for us to be alone and hold hands and listen to music, to cry and not have to explain and to have those words and those kisses, and to feel safe.” Richie is watching her, eyes owlish behind his glasses, and Beverly picks up his hand in hers and kisses her knuckles. “It was easy for me to be with Ben— the easiest thing in the world to be in love with him, because he didn’t hold any of it back. He saw all of that hunger in me and he let me have all of it without question and without a second thought if I could handle it or not. Eddie is strong, and he is brave, and he can handle it all.” 

Richie seems a little shell shocked from it, and he finally clears his throat, “Alright, didn’t know you were a poet too.” 

Beverly shrugs, “I’m coming for your throne, Toaster.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Richie stretches his arms out in front of him then, like he can work all the tension out, “Would you be terribly offended if I bounce?” 

Beverly is halfway to bringing her coffee mug to her mouth and she presses it to her lips and mocks contemplation, “Depends.” 

“On?” 

“If I can give the speech at your wedding.” 

Richie kicks her foot under the table, “Duh, dickhead.” He leans across the table and kisses her temple, “You’ll be my Maid of Honor, obviously.” 

Beverly shakes her head, “No, sorry, you know I have to be Eddie’s.” She winks at him as he shoves all of his things into a burlap messenger bag and shuffles out their front door. 

—

Beverly lets herself into Richie’s apartment tentatively. She likes to think that the front door and foyer area are pretty benign spaces, but know Richie, she’s not sure. “Richie?” She calls his name carefully, “We got some of your mail again so i’m putting it on your—” 

Bev’s always like the idea of day beds. There’s something simple and cozy about them, and when Richie had found a way to fit one right against the bay window of his living room, she had been delighted. It was the perfect place for them to all pile in for movie nights. And drinking nights. 

She thinks it’s particularly cozy now, Richie’s arm wrapped around Eddie, to keep him pressed up against his chest. He snoring softly into Eddie’s hair, thrown into chaotic disarray against the pillow that he has tucked up under his cheek. There’s a trail of clothes, shirts, jeans, a sweater— underwear. Beverly flushes a little, but they have a large grey quilt wrapped around them; Richie’s bare arm and one of Eddie’s uncovered legs the only indecency in the situation. 

They look easy, perfect, safe. 

Beverly looks at Eddie's fingers, curled tightly around Richie’s forearm even in sleep, like he’s a lifeline, tethering him here, and she grins. “Congrats on the log cabin.” She whispers and drops the stack of envelopes onto Richie’s coffee table, closing the door carefully behind her.

— 

Beverly and Eddie keep their arms looped together like otters as they float around the quarry. It’s still pleasantly warm outside and Beverly knows that the bridge of her nose and the tips of her ears are burned. 

Her aunt is taking her away from Derry next week, and she’s relieved. And she’s terrified. 

“You could always come with me.” Beverly sits up, shakes the water from her hair, “I’ll help you pack, your mom will never have to know.” 

Eddie frowns and he runs the back of his wrist over his tired eyes, “I wish.” They leave it at that, no point in making this wound worse. “When you get to Portland you have to let them love you.” Eddie wraps his arms around her, “The right kind of love.” 

“You too, Eds.” She tries to hide her tears in Eddie’s shoulder, but she knows he can feel the warm streak of it against his bare skin, “And then when we see each other again we can have a joint wedding.” 

“In our log cabin!” 

“With our gorgeous husbands.” 

Eddie chews his lip for a moment and ponders, “Poets. We’ll fall in love with poets.” 

Beverly takes Eddies hands in her own, “And _we_ will be their poetry.”


End file.
